Blog Archives

Advice for developing a new website

October 12 2011 | Brett | 3 Comments

One key inspiration for our perpetual grumpiness is the appalling state of many nonprofit websites. Too many are simply too bad. Why? Lots of reasons but first is that nonprofits do not correctly brief, select or work with their developer.

Hootville Communications is very dubious about website developers which we declare despite making part of our living developing websites. Developers are privileged in that they know soooo much more about websites than their clients which can lead to…less than optimum performance.

Over the next few weeks we’ll help you keep website developers honest with some savvy questions. Otherwise you’ll get the site they want to build for you – the quickest, fastest and most profitable.

And yes, dear developers, in future future weeks we’ll tell nonprofits what they are doing wrong.

Q2. What features would you recommend?

A. The developer better have some strong recommendations or you’ll end up with a boring online brochure. Chief among the smorgasboard of ideas: social media sharing technologies such as Sexy Bookmarks, eNewsletter such as MailChimp, online payment, bookings and donations systems, embedded video, Google Analytics, Google Maps of key locations, embedded Twitter feed, pop-up banners, integrated Facebook, easy SEO options such as HeadSpace2 to enable Google-friendly page names and tags. You want lots of suggestions based on the developer’s experience. You needn’t utilise them all but you are paying for their wisdom. Are they wise?

You want a buffet of enticing options; including some you've not had before.

Why do you want all these features? Because having and utilising them means your site is worth visiting more than once. It turns your website into a 24/7 employee and that the money you invest gets a better return. We’ve all been trained by some companies to interact with them via the web; perhaps to book an appointment or pay a bill. In fact we often prefer this. Your site should do the same. Without features your site is likely to be feeling pretty lonely, pretty soon.

Let’s say you want to offer online bookings on your new site. If you use a well-established CMS (see question one below) you will have a range of options for this purpose. This is similar to the range of apps you have for your smartphone which all offer largely the same thing, such as choosing a restaurant. Each app is competing for your custom and is reviewed online by nerds. Read and consider these independently of the developer. The more you know, the smarter your questions; the better your choice.

In a way this is a trick question – you are asking this to see if you the developer will supply more than technical know-how.

Q1. What content management systems do you work with and why?

A. Your content management system (CMS) is fundamental to how your easy or otherwise your site is to build, maintain and expand in the future. You use the CMS to present your words and images on the web as a working website. It will determine how many options you have for features such as online payments, online shopping, booking systems or social media sharing. The CMS will determine if your site remains cohesive with ever-evolving technologies. It will also determine the mental health of your web editor.

These guys think their suits are sooo special.

A website is not like a Saville Row suit – you don’t benefit from having it handmade from scratch by one artisan. Think of it as a quality car, assembled from dozens of tested, proven parts from various specialist manufacturers, enhanced by some (relatively minor) choices you make, all under the experienced eye of one car company which takes ultimate responsibility and most of the profit. (We hate car-analogies but in this case it’s a valid one.)

Hopefully the developer will answer “WordPress” or another proven CMS such as Drupal or Joomla! though we cannot vouch for these platforms. If they talk of their own special CMS which only they develop and maintain, walk away. Run away if they explain that their system is superior to say, WordPress which drives 19 million sites. Slam the door behind you if they start explaining that you must pay ongoing fees for use of their CMS.

You can save yourself from a whole lot of wasted meetings by clarifying this straight away. Developers will generally have a preference. This is their preference, not yours. Don’t be swayed without great reason.

Do some homework by asking owners of great (not good) websites about their CMS. You may be surprised at the passion of the responses. And be sure to ask the person who actually updates the site – not the boss or the techie.

Tagged Online Savvy 101, web design, websites, wordpress

new websites fail to please

July 5 2011 | Brett | Comment

The site we built for the Australian age services sector campaign. We also helped develop the campaign itself.

Nothing Hootville does is more complex than creating new websites. (See our latest collection at the end of this article.) It touches upon every aspect of an organisation, requires contributions and cooperation from every department, involves a thousand decisions by inexperts about specific, complex webby issues.

Everyone has an opinion but few people start with a clear criteria about what they want – though they know what they hate. Good outcomes are far from guaranteed.

As in marriage, satisfaction is far from guaranteed

No wonder a recent post in HubSpot blog stated that one third of 152 in-house marketers were disatisfied with their brand spanking new websites. Gosh. Websites are too expensive, too important and too resource-intensive for 33% of us to be left with a hangover.

Poster Mark Volpe provides a few ways to avoid disapointment. We’ll throw in these of our own.

1. Treat your website as an employee. Like a human employee, websites should have functions to fulfill such as taking booking and payments, promoting volunteering, automatically taking new memberships, steering email enquiries to the appropriate department, media liasion centre and so on. Suddenly your new site should be measured against much more specific criteria. Most sites don’t go far beyond providing lots of words. (More on this on Brett’s upcoming article for the Fundraising Institute of Australia magazine.)

2. Don’t consult any more broadly than required by law. It’s not politically correct but we are dead against more than two or three people throwing their two cent pieces in the spoiled broth, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. Honestly; how many people in your organisation advise your accountant or lawyer? There are too many decisions to make (starting with choice of content management system) to explain the selection criteria to inexperts who are generally more concerned with aesthetics than functionalities. We’d like to see the CEO and senior marketing and communications people involved. That’s about it.

community health service website developer

We built this for community health service Inner South Community Health Service

3. Use third party providers. Your developer or ISP provides a free eNewsletter function that can be a part of your new site. Great. Even greater; it’s free! Well guess what kids; it’s free for a reason: it’s bollocks. Same can go for online donation technology, publication display, polls, embedded videos, membership systems, online stores, ticket booking systems and so on. Your developer should knowingly help you browse through the options but should also listen to your opinions. Companies that specialise in providing a specific function (say MailChimp and its eNewsletter system) generally create superior products which are more regularly updated. Your website might intergrate four or five applications (or functions) provided by third parties. (Are you getting a sense of how many decisions you have to make, how many issues you have to come to grips with and why you want a small decision-making team?)

4. Don’t trust your developer. Imagine you are building your home. Would you simply say to the builder: “Build us whatever you usually build.”? Of course not. Anyone who has ever engaged a tradesman knows that unless you specify every detail you will get what suits the tradesman.

Sure the best tradies will guide you through each decision. (Of course when they do, we get impatient and complain at the size of the bill.)

Family violence alliance website by Hootville.

Most times though, you’ll get the easiest, most profitable range of options for the tradie. Web developers are no different plus usually come to your project from a technical perspective – not a marketing perspective, a communications perspective or a PR perspective.

The best outcomes come from being an informed client, willing to research, listen, evaluate and communicate.

Recent sites we’ve built:

For a regional family violence alliance.

For a community health service.

For another community health service.

For an RTO and VET provider.

For the age services sector.

For a little side business we run.

This is the sort of stuff we talk about in Online Savvy 101.

Tagged PR advice, web design, websites

What do visitors to your site want?

June 5 2011 | Brett | Comment

Meeting your visitors' wish is your first but not only command.

We don’t trust survey results – people like to say all the right things.

They can also be persuaded to say all sorts of things depending on how questions are asked and the options available as answers.

After all; people always promise to vote for candidates who protect the environment and create a better future for our kids. In reality they vote for the more likeable candidate who offers the best back-pocket sweetener.

That said; this stat courtesy of HubSpot, rings true because we all hate not being able to find what we want. When developing sites we try to meet this demand with sitemaps that create lots of categories of information and lots of pages within those categories. A sitemap is the blueprint that itemises and categories all the content of your website.

Funny because it's true.

Here’s one tip – create a Publications section for all newsletters, annual reports, brochures etc. Many websites have these spread around like so much confetti.

Another tip: offer big, clear picture-based navigation on the homepage to separate key audiences such as professionals, carers, members.

Another tip: how many of you non-profiteers have exactly zero information about the price of your services? Yep – that would be most of you. Why? And do you similarly keep hush-hush about how people can register for the programs that you describe on your services section. Aha!

Your sitemap is crucial. Don't leave it to your developer.

But here’s the thing: meeting visitor desires is one part of the equation. What do you want to get from your visitors? Their subscription to your database? A donation? A signature of a virtual petition? Attendance at your event? You need to optimise your site to meet both visitor expectations and your objectives. Do you know exactly what your objectives are?

Along with ongoing Facebook advice we’ll be throwing in some webpage optimisation articles to help you meet your objectives so drop by.

Tagged page optimisation, sitemaps, web design